Wal-Mart Employees Ask Judge for Another $72 Million in Damages, Interest in Break-Time Case

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania who won a $78.5 million judgment for working off the clock and through rest breaks returned to court Wednesday to seek another $72 million in damages and interest.

They argue that about 125,000 plaintiffs in the class-action suit deserve an additional $500 each in damages, or $62 million, under Pennsylvania labor laws because the jury found that the world's largest retailer acted in bad faith. These so-called liquidated damages are designed to compensate people for the delay in payment.

The remaining 61,000 plaintiffs -- who do not qualify for those damages because of legal time limits -- should share in $10 million in interest on the back pay, lawyer Michael Donovan argued.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which denies wrongdoing and is appealing the jury award, opposed the added damages and interest. Company attorneys said that Donovan merely estimated the number of potential plaintiffs, and has not proven that each was shortchanged.

The workers already are expected to receive anywhere from about $50 to a few thousand dollars each from the initial award, depending on how long they worked for the company.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Mark Bernstein did not immediately rule on the issues argued Wednesday. He questioned why Donovan sought liquidated damages of $500 per worker when the statute could be interpreted to allow $500 in damages each time a worker was shortchanged.

"If I'm a claimant, I'm entitled to everything the law says I'm entitled to, and if that's $500 every time I was shorted and I was shorted 24 times a year, then it's $12,000," Bernstein said.

Donovan said he did not interpret the state wage law that way. He added that Wal-Mart's lack of record-keeping would make it impossible to determine the number of individual violations.

Bernstein oversaw the five-week trial, which culminated in October when the jury rejected Wal-Mart's claim that some employees voluntarily chose to work through breaks and that the off-the-clock work was minimal.

The suit covers current and former employees who worked at Wal-Mart and Sam's Clubs in Pennsylvania from March 1998 through May 2006.

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., earned $11.2 billion in profits on $312.4 billion in sales in the last fiscal year. Donovan argued at trial that the unpaid work gave Wal-Mart an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

Lead plaintiff Dolores Hummel said she put in about 10 hours each month off the clock to keep up with demands at a Sam's Club in Reading, where the single mother worked for 10 years to support her son. Sam's Clubs are a division of Wal-Mart.

Donovan has also petitioned the court for more than $40 million in legal fees, plus $5.5 million in expenses. Wal-Mart, which must pay the fees unless the verdict is overturned, objected to the request and asked for more details.

Wal-Mart is appealing a $172 million verdict in a similar California case and settled a Colorado suit over unpaid wages for $50 million.

Wal-Mart policy in Pennsylvania gives hourly employees one paid 15-minute break during a shift of at least three hours and two such breaks, plus an unpaid 30-minute meal break, on a shift of at least six hours.

Your plan is idealistic and impractical. It takes away peoples' individual freedom and makes them just more pawns of the collective. Whether that collective marches under the banner of socialism or conservative republicanism, it is still a collective. No thanks.

Why should an employee have to be a member of a union to negotiate with management? Under unions, stellar employees have no incentive to achieve, since they will receive the same wages and benefits as those who sit around with their feet up all day. Leeches have no incentive to do anything, other than when the boss is around. This affects productivity and reduces the company's flexibility and opportunity to earn profits.

Not only that, they pigeonhole you into a particular cog in the wheel. Need to move a table in your office? Can't just take 5 minutes to move it in a union shop, you have to submit a maintenance request and let them get to you two weeks later. Otherwise, the union maintenance guy will file a grievance because you were doing "his job". Meanwhile, your project schedule takes a hit that could have been easily avoided with some common sense, as opposed to following union rules.

Sounds a lot like what happens when a company decides to outsource services that were once handled in-house. However, because outsourcing is usually management's bright idea, only the underlings complain.

And that management that you have to vote for runs on the platform of how many goodies can they squeeze out of the eeevil management to the point that they make their industries noncompetitive and bankrupt their companies (see United Airlines, Delta Airlines and others who used to have a great employer-provided pension plan that the unions destroyed by their tactics.) A union will end up hurting it's workers that way, but the fat-cat union bosses still get their money and to heck with the folks that they are supposed to be helping

There is an alternative to the lawyers and government intervention: unions. Let workers organize and fight for their rights together. I would be in favor of making unions membership mandatory for everybody who works. Hey, let even managers have their own unions!

Oooo.... Good thinking!Maybe someday the US could be as great as France!

Why should an employee have to be a member of a union to negotiate with management? Under unions, stellar employees have no incentive to achieve, since they will receive the same wages and benefits as those who sit around with their feet up all day.

Executive compensation is negotiated with the help of attorneys.

Couldn't we also ask what incentive corporate executives have to preform when severance packages net them more money than most of us can earn in several lifetimes of work? What impact do you think it has on the average employee to watch a CEO preside over a 40% decline in the value of his company and walk away from the failure wealthy, while he gets laid-off in the subsequent restructuring?

Nope. Nine out of ten are dumps. Steer clear unless you like ghetto gangbangers, trailer trash, and borrachos.*

FRIEND: I don't get you. Wal-Mart is cheaper. Why do you always shop at Target?

B-CHAN: because no one has ever tried to sell me half-wolf puppies out of a cardboard box in the parking lot at Target.

NOTE: I'm not saying that everyone from the ghetto or who lives in a trailer is a bad person. There are lots of fine folks living in both environments, just as there are plenty of trashy people living in pricey suburbs. These terms are verbal shorthand only.

"Folks have got to realize that they're on the same team in a company."

LOL.

If everyone's on the same team in your average corporation, how come management gets rewarded for screwing up their jobs (big-bux severance packages) while the salaried schlubs and line-monkeys get nothing but a kick in the ass?

You and I both know that most companies fail due to bad management, not bad work. Yet when things go to hell it's the least responsible (the rank and file) who get hurt, while those who ran the company into the ground float safely to Earth on golden parachutes. Some "team"!

Indeed it is, and employees have the right to use an attorney when negotiating compensation also.

"What impact do you think it has on the average employee to watch a CEO preside over a 40% decline in the value of his company..."

CEO compensation is the business of the owners of the company, i.e., the shareholders, not the employees. Employees, if they wish to have some say in CEO compensation, may buy stock like any other individual. Unprofitable CEOs will soon find themselves unemployed, and unemployable.

Corporations are not job banks or welfare offices. They are not social engineering experimentation arenas designed to ensure "fairness" for everyone. Corporations exist to make a profit.

One of the great things about this country is that where you end up on the ladder need not depend on where you started. Any employee may gain the skills and education to potentially make himself CEO, if he wishes. There is no law saying one must be a wage earner for life. Many CEOs come from quite humble backgrounds, and I for one, do not begrudge them their success. As for the Ken Lays of the world, I believe they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the vast majority of CEOs are not Ken Lay. The vast majority got where they are by out-learning, out-thinking and out-working everyone else around them.

As for the "feelings" of any particular employee, one might just as legitimately ask how employees "feel" when they lose their jobs because the union demanded wages and benefits the company couldn't afford to pay over the long term.

Unless I own stock in the company, the severance package of the CEO doesn't concern me any more than the hourly wage of the burger flipper. If I have partial ownership of either company, i.e., if I own stock, then I have a say.

If I have no stock in the company, and therefore no stake in the deal, preoccupation with the terms of someone else's severance package smacks of nothing more than plain old-fashioned jealousy.

I'm not preoccupied -- I'm amused. It makes me laugh to watch the TANSTAAFL, "everybody should be paid what they deserve" free market True Believers try to defend these slimeball con artists as they eat one Free Lunch after another at shareholder and employee expense.

As for jealousy: I have my own business and couldn't care less what anybody else makes. My family and I live in the magic land of Enough and are happy to do so.

Unions employ armies of lawyers and are not at all adverse to running to the courts at the drop of a hat. Litigation and the threat of litigation is one of the biggest hammers they employ, used much more often than strikes.

I meant to add...if your business is not unionized, is it publicly-traded? Can I buy stock and then dictate your compensation? Or even, as some here would have it, get a job working for you, band with my fellow employees, and then dictate our salaries and benefits based on what we think we're worth, and demand you pay it whether your company can support that or not?

Our business is a family business. My mother-in-law owns it, my wife runs it, and I do whatever scut work is needed. (I also have my own separate business). Our employees are not unionized. Instead, my family pays them as much as we can afford to pay them (far above the minimum wage or the "going rate" for the same work) plus bonuses, advances, emergency loans, etc. And where does the money for the higher wages come from? Out of my family's pockets. We all live modestly so that we can pay our employees as much as possible.

Note; While I agree with A. Pole on many issues, I'm not a big fan of unions as they currently exist. I support something more along the lines of medieval guilds. But bringng back the guilds would require the restructuring of our entire society, which won't happen until the whole unsustainable house of cards comes crashing down of its own accord. Until that happens, the best workers can hope for is to find work at businesses owned by geerous people like our folks and avoid working for slimeball con artists.

Fair enough... difference noted. But she could easily 'document' anything on her own. As the complainant isn't she required to support her claim beyond a reasonable doubt? She could write anything she wanted somewhere and claim its 'documentation', but that simply creates a he said she said scenario. I would think that something more substantial would be needed. Perhaps Wal Mart security video that shows her actually working at a time when she was clearly off the clock.

72
posted on 01/04/2007 10:14:23 AM PST
by navyguy
(We don't need more youth. What we need is a fountain of SMART.)

We agree more than we differ, then, since you know there are human beings on both sides. Too many on this forum act like it's the eeeeevil corporations vs. the poor, innocent, put-upon wage slaves. Such simplistic, linear thinking isn't worthy of conservatives.

My extended family also owned a business when I was growing up in a non-right-to work-state. Like you, everyone lived frugally and reinvested every spare penny into building the business. Unfortunately, union agitators came in and demanded more pay and benefits than the business could support. The family tried to pay the wages for awhile, but eventually they were forced to liquidate the labor-intensive part of the business rather than go under. It was a terrible, terrible time for everyone, for the owners who who had acted in good faith at all times, were scrupulously honest, and paid good wages and benefits, and for the employees, who lost their jobs when the company went out of business. The union thugs merely went away to harass others.

I have little sympathy for unions. They once served a purpose, but no more. Now they're merely vehicles for socialism, for elevating the least common denominator at the expense of excellence. Employers will pay market wages and offer good benefits to skilled employees who contribute to the bottom line.

I can't speak to the facts of this case, but I can tell you what happened to me back in the early 80s when I worked at a Monkey Wards around Christmas one year. Due to increased help that was hired, the manager's expenses at the store were up. So he told people that they would be expected to work off the clock, because there would be no overtime pay, which automatically kicked in after 40 hours a week, for those of us who were full time workers. The manager actually timed everyone out (all the floor employees were hourly, myself included), and we were expected to clean and restock the disaster that was the toy department as well as our own departments, and it wan't unusual to have to stay for nearly 2 hours.

You ask how we were "forced?" Well, we were given a choice. "Do it my way, or the highway." We were told that if we didn't do what he wanted, and work the extra hours at no pay, we'd be fired, and given bad references. Back then, nobody thought about suing or anything like that. A few people did refuse to work, and they were fired on the spot and told to get out. And knowing some of the people, I was told that they were given VERY bad references by the manager, and had trouble getting another job.

CEO compensation is the business of the owners of the company, i.e., the shareholders, not the employees.

If so, then it is not the business of workers to care about the interests of the owners or CEO. And the union is the best way to promote workers interests along with electing the pro-labor politicians. Everybody for his own.

76
posted on 01/04/2007 6:32:15 PM PST
by A. Pole
(" There is no other god but Free Market, and Adam Smith is his prophet ! Bazaar Akbar! ")

If I have no stock in the company, and therefore no stake in the deal, preoccupation with the terms of someone else's severance package smacks of nothing more than plain old-fashioned jealousy.

If the few get too much and many get too little it is dangerous. Too much wealth or power corrupts while poverty demoralizes. Jealousy is a natural instinct like thirst or fear or feeling of pain or sexual desire, it serves a purpose.

Without instincts the mankind would die out.

77
posted on 01/04/2007 6:36:59 PM PST
by A. Pole
(" There is no other god but Free Market, and Adam Smith is his prophet ! Bazaar Akbar! ")

Different perspectives. Americans sometmes forget that it was a Polish union that was instrumental in starting the demise of the Soviet Empire. Poles sometimes forget that American unions have an unworkable "business model."

In their current form, they're absolutely irrelevant. But that doesn't mean they can't be relevant again. Somebody in the near or far future is going to earn a PhD by studying why the unions didn't change their business model to adapt to a changing world.

Great point...and deserving of a PhD. The first thing they need to do is get rid of all the union organizers who break bones (or at least threaten to). They always seem to devolve that way, don't they?

And reading A. Pole's posts reminds us where that mindset comes from, eh?

Aye...there's the rub. How do you help two opposing sides at the same time? Muy difficile, no?

You assume they are opposing sides. I say they aren't necessarily opposing sides. They certainly aren't in Japan.

What if unions took over the healthcare responsibility? Certainly a national union would have more clout with insurance companies than a single firm. This isn't unheard of here in the states -- both the Screen Actors Guild and Actors Equity offer excellent health plans as well as retirement homes for aging thespians.

Corporations are not job banks or welfare offices. They are not social engineering experimentation arenas designed to ensure "fairness" for everyone. Corporations exist to make a profit.

I heard something very much like that from a CEO, "we're in the software business, not the welfare business". This very same CEO ran the business into the ground, and escaped with a golden parachute that included lifetime medical benefits for two sons. It is also reminiscent of HP CEO Fiorina's statement about Americans right to jobs. Perhaps there is a connection between the attitude and performance.

As for the "feelings" of any particular employee, one might just as legitimately ask how employees "feel" when they lose their jobs because the union demanded wages and benefits the company couldn't afford to pay over the long term.

There is plenty of abuse on all sides.

These days unions are a small player; according to the census bureau, 14% of the workforce belong to unions.

Well, we have models for that: the VA has much clout, and bargains hard for deals with drug comapnies. Only problem is, choice is limited, and other healthcare systems in this country subsidize drug development for them.

Unions served a purpose when conditions were awful, eg, child labor, unsafe conditions (Triangle fire), etc. They have outlived their usefullness, IMO, and should just go away. Unions are now run by thugs and their hangers on (remember Jackie Presser and Jimmy Hoffa?) and have brought about the demise of American industry along with their own jobs.

See, that's just the thing, apparently it isn't -- because the unions are shrinking/failing. Any organization should be able to adapt with the times. Somehow unions have missed the boat.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a strong suspicion that the money that union bosses have milked from the current system exceeds the present cash value of the likely proceeds from a union that benefited companies and workers.

A piano-roll maker may adapt itself very well to new technologies (QRS, a long-time manufacturer, is on the web) but I don't think there's any way to get as much money out of the piano roll market today as one could in the 1920's.

Perhaps wiser policies would have allowed union bosses to milk more money from companies before dragging them under, but had they milked less aggressively it's possible the companies would have dwindled anyway, even if more slowly, leaving less money for the union bosses to capture.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.